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Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Confirmation

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Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Confirmation University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 5-2020 Sex, Stress, and the Supreme Court: Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation Hearings ot the Supreme Court Alexandra Johnson University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the American Politics Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, and the Social Influence and Political Communication Commons Citation Johnson, A. (2020). Sex, Stress, and the Supreme Court: Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation Hearings ot the Supreme Court. Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/3621 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sex, Stress, and the Supreme Court: Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation Hearings to the Supreme Court A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Science by Alexandra Johnson University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, 2018 University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, 2018 May 2020 University of Arkansas This thesis is approved for the recommendation to the Graduate Council. ___________________________________ Patrick A. Stewart, Ph.D. Thesis Director ___________________________________ ___________________________________ William Schreckhise, Ph.D. Karen Sebold, Ph.D. Committee Member Committee Member 1 Abstract This study analyzed the relationship between verbal and nonverbal vocalic communication patterns exhibited by Brett Kavanaugh, now a sitting Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, during his Senate confirmation hearings in 2018. Additionally, the relationship between verbal statement types: attempt to define reality, personal narrative, policy positions, attacks, acclaims, and defenses, and the nonverbal vocalics of sighs, sharp intakes of breath, and sniffs were evaluated together to see which statement types would elicit higher physiological stress responses during both the 16-minute speech given at the end of the Day One hearing and the 45-minute testimony during the sexual assault hearing. Scholarship suggests that verbal and nonverbal communication are both used to create judgements of credibility (Stiff et al., 1989) which was used by the Senate and the American citizens at large during this political scandal. Video content analysis software, ANVIL, was used to code both hearings for Kavanaugh’s flow of speech, referred to as utterances, his disruptions in speech flow, referred to as intra-utterance pauses, individual statement end-times, and nonverbal vocalic observations. Three coders read and applied one of the five statement types to each sentence of both hearings. Results from the study showed that time spent in both utterances and in recovery during the intra-utterance pause differed. Statement types provided evidence to support the claim that the narratives of each hearing would differ due to higher levels of stress during the sexual assault hearing. Additionally, the U.S. Senate sexual assault hearing found Kavanaugh evincing a substantially greater amount vocalic stress signals such as sighs, sharp intakes of breath, and sniffs when compared with his first day testimony. Finally, when analyzed together, personal narrative statements were most likely while attack and defense statements were least likely to elicit vocalic stress responses. This study provides a microanalysis perspective on how verbal and nonverbal vocalics elicit physiological responses during times of heightened stress. Keywords: Senate hearings; stress; Brett Kavanaugh; content analysis; nonverbal behavior; vocalic utterances; intra-utterance pauses; sighs, sharp breath intakes; sniffs. ©2020 Alexandra Johnson All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank Dr. Patrick Stewart for his expertise, guidance, and mentorship throughout the process of writing this thesis. I would like to also express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Schreckhise and Dr. Sebold for serving as my committee members. Their flexibility and kindness as I finished this process during a global pandemic was very appreciated. I must sincerely thank Emily Stouffer, Sarah Ames, and Adam Franky for the many hours they spent coding and discussing the verbal and nonverbal behavior of Brett Kavanaugh for me. Their effort did not go unnoticed as their observations and insights contributed greatly to the findings of this study. This project is better because of you! I also have to thank the Graduate Coordinator within the Political Science Department, Dr. Conge, for his willingness to answer my many questions with genuine kindness throughout this process. To my classmates Alejandra Campos and Chloe Riggs, I am so thankful for your endless encouragement over the course of the past two years. The best hype girls around. Lastly and most of all, I have to thank my family and friends for their constant motivation, reassurance, and reminders to get some fresh air when the times got tough. I would not have been able to do this without each of you. Dedication This study is wholeheartedly dedicated to my family. I would not be here without the work ethic, confidence in my abilities and intelligence, and love for politics that they instilled in me throughout my life. I will be forever grateful for that. To the absolute best family in the world, Patrick, Susan, and Shannon Johnson Table of Contents Introduction & Historical Analysis………………………………………………………….…1 Chapter 2 – The Verbal Style…………….…………………………………………………....11 Chapter 3 – The Vocalic Style.…….……………………………………………………….….34 Chapter 4 – The Coherence of Verbal and Vocalic Styles…………………………………...57 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………73 References……………………………………………………………………………………….88 1 Introduction & Historical Analysis On July 10, 2018, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh, then a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to the Supreme Court of the United States. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, administered by the Senate Judiciary Committee, were held between September 4th and 6th of 2018. Though his initial confirmation proceedings were not without the presence of voiced criticisms from opposing Democratic members of Congress, with one exception (Sen. Manchin of West Virginia), in addition to liberal media and interest groups, it was conducted largely as those before him. Procedurally, Kavanaugh had a moment to address the Committee before spending three days answering a plethora of thorough questions from all of the Committee members to understand Kavanaugh’s approach to the bench and opinions on policy that he would potentially impact if confirmed. Shortly after his initial hearings, however, sexual assault allegations came to light on September 14, 2018. This led to additional hearings to address the allegations where both Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey-Ford, the woman who recounts the alleged sexual assault, testified in front of the Committee. She claimed that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party while they both were in high school in the early 1980s. Dr. Blasey-Ford and Kavanaugh both testified on September 27th, separately, to provide their sides of the story to the committee. Kavanaugh adamantly denied the allegations. A potential influence of his confirmation hearings was the significant number of women elected into Congress during the 2018 Midterm elections, just as had happened after the Thomas scandal and confirmation in 1991. This midterm cycles saw 235 women nominees advance to the general election, over double from 2016, which had 120. The results increased the number of women in the House from its previous record of 85 to 102 (90 Democrats, 12 Republicans), with 2 35 being first-time winners of House seats. In the Senate, 23 women advanced from the primaries, and 5 new women won their general elections (3 Republican, 2 Democrat), with 25 women represented in the chamber’s entirety. Additionally, in multiple races, both candidates were female. The House had 52 women in 26 races, and the Senate had 6 races with both female candidates. This nomination was President Trump’s second Supreme Court confirmation during his first term. The first being Neil Gorsuch, who was confirmed on April 7, 2017, 66 days after his nomination, by a 54-45 vote which included support from all Republican and three Democratic senators. Gorsuch’s confirmation came after President Barack Obama’s attempt to fill the same vacancy within his last year in office when he nominated Judge Merrick Garland, who was more ideologically moderate. However, the Republican-majority Senate refused to proceed with the nomination, arguing that filling the vacancy should be decided by the newly elected president after the 2016 election. The Republican-majority successfully rejected this “critical” confirmation, defined below, as Garland was nominated by a Democratic president to replace one of the most conservative Justices to ever sit on the Court. The Significance of Supreme Court Confirmations Though Congress is the main policy-making body, and the president is required to sign those bills into law, the courts also play a role in shaping policy. Landmark decisions like Munn v Illinois
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